Assistant Editor, MUYIWA OLALEYE, examines the intrigues and dimensions of the workers’ salary impasse in Osun State.
The tensed situation in Osun State is yet to abate. This is no thanks to the inability of the Governor Rauf Aregebsola administration to offset the backlog of salaries to the civil servants in the state.
Despite the N713.7 billion approved by the federal government for the states and local governments to pay backlog of workers’ salaries, the situation in the state is still tensed over the issue of welfare. This is despite the initial efforts of the state government to pay its workers one month salary.
When the federal government announced the bailout fund, hopes had arisen that the initiative would mollify the obviously traumatised Osun workers. Things however took more unpredictable dimensions when the workers rebuffed the state government’s gesture to pay them one month out of the alleged nine months they were being owed.
They had insisted on not taking anything less than five months out of the nine months owed them.
It was against this backdrop that the special intervention by the federal government came to Osun workers and their counterparts in other parts of the country as a huge relief.
But the agitations for the salaries of the workers took a different dimension penultimate Tuesday, when two factions of the Osun civil service unions held different protests, which eventually ended in fiasco. While a group was in support of the government, the other was against the government; hence, at the end of the day, the protests resulted in fracas that sent commuters and residents of Osogbo, the state capital, scampering for safety. Although no lives were lost in the fracas, according to reports, several people were said to have been wounded.
The march by the anti-government group, which observers and union leaders said was meant to be peaceful, was alleged to have been disrupted by the All Progressives Congress (APC) thugs. But the director of publicity and strategy of the party in the state, Kunle Oyatomi, debunked the allegation that it was the APC thugs that disrupted the rallies, saying that the anti-government rally was the game plan of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), to discredit the government despite that the government had started the process of paying workers’ salaries.
PDP, however, denied the charge, saying that it had no hand in it and that it was purely the affair of the workers.
The crisis, which the Osun State government is having over the workers’ salaries, has been on for the past four months. It, in fact, got to a critical stage in May when the workers began to castigate the government for not being sensitive to their plight.
The situation was so bad for the workers that groups and individuals started making monetary donations to them for their welfare.
Among the donations made to them were food items to cushion the hardship they appeared to be going through. Humanitarian as the gesture appeared, the situation became an embarrassment to the state government. In apparent move to halt the trend, the governor had to come out to denounce the way the workers in the state were going about the whole affair, stressing that Osun was not the only state owing its workers.
The state chairman of the APC, Prince Gboyega Famodun, lent his voice in explaining that the debt crisis was not deliberate, but because of the shortfall in the revenue profile of the state. According to him, the federal allocation of the state government dropped by 80 per cent, hence the inability of the state to meet up with some of its financial obligations. He pointed out that the allocation of the government in 2013 was N5.5 billion in February that year, but dropped to N466 million by April of 2015. According to him, when APC came on board, in November 2010, emolument of workers in the state was N1.4 billion, while it stands at N3.6 billion presently. He stressed that this was caused by the increase in the minimum wage in 2012.
Prince Famodun further explained that from November 2010 to April 2014, the government of Osun spent N120.4 billion on salaries and emolument out of the total allocation, including all sources from Abuja, that were estimated at N177 billion.
He added that at present, the internally-generated revenue (IGR) of the state stands at N27 billion while recurrent expenditure stood at N96.7 billion.
In summary, Famodun argued that the total money from all sources to Osun stands at N205.3 billion, while salaries plus recurrent expenditure gulp N217.1 billion, which leaves the state with a deficit of N11.8 billion.
The chairman stressed that his explanation was necessary in view of the position of PDP which on several occasions had called on Aregbesola to resign if he could not fulfil his obligations of paying workers’ salaries.
Incidentally, PDP is not the only body frowning at the workers’ plight in Osun. Civil Society Coalition for the Emancipation of Osun State, Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice also condemned the state government over the issue, arguing that Aregbesola and his deputy, Mrs. Grace Tomori, have no justification to continue to stay in office.
A serving judge, Justice Oloyede Folahanmi, also joined the civil societies and other groups in the protest against non-payment of workers’ salaries.
Justice Folahanmi had written a petition to the Osun State House of Assembly asking for the impeachment of Aregbesola and Tomori. She submitted that both the governor and the deputy are no longer fit to administer the state for their inability to pay eight months salaries of workers, including her own as a Judge of the State High Court. The judge’s petition, which generated controversies within and outside government circles, added to the call for the removal of the APC government.
The House of Assembly, which ordered that the petition of Justice Oloyede be investigated, is yet to come out with its report, though it was learnt that the Chief Judge of the state had issued a query to Justice Oloyede over the petition she wrote.
While the issue lingers, Osun remains tensed over the salary issue, despite the hope occasioned by the bailout funds doled out by President Muhammadu Buhari.
All the parties concerned are still throwing tantrums. The other day, for instance, director of publicity and strategy of the PDP, Prince Diran Odeyemi, accused Aregbesola of not being mature enough to govern the state, raising fears that he might misuse the intervention fund from the federal government if not properly monitored.
People like Aregbesola, he asserted, should not be trusted with governance.
But in reaction, the director of bureau of communications and strategy in the governor’s office, Semiu Okanlawon, dismissed the PDP as agents of destruction who can never see anything good in what people are doing. He accused the party of being blind to the progress of the APC government because of Aregbesola’s defeat of its governorship candidate, Iyiola Omisore, in the last governorship election in the state.
